Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the statistics published by her Department entitled Police powers and procedures, published on 17 November 2022, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the frequency with which an Appropriate Adult was called for a child detained overnight in police custody in (a) London region and (b) England and Wales.

The collection and publication of this data will bring additional transparency and accountability to police custody in England and Wales and help us better understand how and why police powers and procedures are used within the custody process. The Home Office only received data from a subset of forces so the findings should be interpreted with caution as it is partial and not representative of the national picture. We will work with police forces and the NPCC to improve data quality in the future and use the data published on 17 November to inform conversations with the police and other stakeholders to promote wider policy development.

Children who are charged and denied bail must be transferred to local authority accommodation unless it is impracticable to do so. We expect forces and local authorities to work together to facilitate this in line with the provisions of the Concordat on Children in Custody.

We are pleased to note that in 99% of cases an appropriate adult was called for a child detained in police custody but concerns remain that only in 41% cases was an appropriate adult called for a vulnerable adult. We acknowledge that appropriate adult provision for vulnerable adults needs to improve and will look towards both the police and local authorities to work together to improve in this area.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility for the provision of appropriate adults for children who must be provided an appropriate adult when detained in police custody.

Adults identified as vulnerable must be supported in custody by an Appropriate Adult. The 2018 PCC-Local Authority Partnership was introduced to improve the planning and delivery of appropriate adult services.